Saturday, July 3, 2010

What Was I Thinking???

Seriously? I actually thought I would do more than 1 loop. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

More on that in a minute.
We made it up to the house last night a bit after 10. We either missed all the traffic, or we went in the opposite direction as everyone else. Once we unloaded the car, bikes and all, it was a pretty impressive sight in the living room.

Saturday morning.
The other house made it over around 8:30 and we all were getting our finishing touches on the bikes to head out for our adventures.

Tammy, Mimi and I decided to do last year's Oly course, as all the nuts-o people were doing the full Half. The nuts-o people are planning on riding the new Oly course tomorrow, so figured we could 'join' them tomorrow.

Good plan.

But we quickly learned why they changed the course.
First of all, the first hill, it took me forever. I thought my heart was going to pop out and my lungs were burning. Not a good sign for the first 5 miles. When I caught back up to Tammy and Mimi on a downhill, I went to shift, and I was already in the big ring. In other words, that first hill - I did it in a very hard gear. Oops.

After a massive downhill, with "SLOW" spray painted we quickly found the ups. And then came Frank Brenneman Road. See, leading up to Frank, I was already in my lowest gear, so when I took the left turn, saw the hill, a lot of words came out of my mouth that are not suitable for this blog. What I found out in regards to this hill.Frank Brenneman Rd: Cat 1, 0.7 miles avg 10%, max 23%. Last 0.4 miles, avg 15%, max 23%
Did I make it up, no, not so much. Did Tammy. Nope. Mimi - HECK YEAH!! There were 2 sections and she waited at the break, and then powered through the finish.

The rest of the ride had some rollers and we did a great job of waiting for each other (aka, they waited for me a lot). And of course, it ended with a lovely hill called Toothpick.Toothpick: Cat 4, 0.25 miles avg 9%, max 16%.
Considering my currently training (or lack thereof), I was actually pretty happy with the day.And looking at the elevation chart, I hope you can understand why we called it after 1 loop.
But, this left us plenty of time to relax by the lake before the rest of the crew made it back. Feeling bad for the suckers who like pain, I decided to be nice and have fresh backed chocolate chip cookies waiting for them.